CHAPTER 12
“Hey, India,” Lainey said from behind the counter.
“Oh, hey. Is she here?”
“She’s in the back.” Lainey nodded that way. “Is that for me?”
“It is.” India placed an iced coffee on the counter. “And this is for her.” She smiled and held up the caramel latte. “They didn’t have the peanut butter cookies. Sorry.”
“No worries. This is great. Thanks. How much do I owe you?”
“Oh, we get the regular coffees for free and a discount on the other stuff, so nothing,” she said. “I’ll just go find her.”
India pointed toward the back of the shop and started walking, but then she heard something.
“No deal. I might lose this, but I’m not sacrificing my integrity. The reality is, this is still my land. I’m not selling it. And as long as that’s the case, the shop is still protected,” she heard Maisie say.
“You know the city can take the land, right? All I have to do is suggest we put a new freeway on-ramp right through this property. The city just gives you the property value, and your little store gets bulldozed.”
“Shit,” she whispered to herself when she recognized her brother’s voice. She quickly turned back around, placed Maisie’s coffee on the counter, and said, “Um… I’m going to go to the bathroom. Sounds like she’s talking to someone. I don’t want to interrupt.”
“Yeah, that lame Colter guy is here,” Lainey told her and took a drink of her iced coffee.
“Right. Bathroom. Be right back.”
India veered to the left and headed to the bathroom.
“You wouldn’t put an on-ramp here,” Maisie said.
“No, but I could put something else. We’ve been looking for another place for a police station.” Colter replied.
“Is that a threat?” Maisie asked.
India nearly stopped and turned to go tell her brother to get the hell out.
“No, it’s just a fact. And I’ve got to get back to my office. Call me if you change your mind. I’ll leave the door open, so to speak, for a few days. Then, it closes for good, and you can kiss your landmark plaque goodbye,” Colter said.
He must have left after that because India didn’t hear anything else.
She disappeared into the bathroom, not needing to actually use it, and waited for what she hoped was an appropriate amount of time.
She tried to estimate how long it would take for someone to get from the back of the store to the front, waited ten extra seconds just in case, and then flushed the toilet and washed her hands so as not to raise any suspicion.
After that, she opened the door, popped her head out, and even though she couldn’t see the door, she looked around before taking a step out of the room and making her way back up the center aisle.
“Hey,” Maisie said when she saw her.
“Hi. Sorry, I meant to use the bathroom at the office but grabbed the coffee instead.” She nodded to the counter. “That’s yours.”
“You brought me coffee?” Maisie asked with a smile.
“I did.”
“Don’t get jealous. She brought me coffee, too,” Lainey said.
“Shut up.” Maisie laughed and picked up the cup.
No one said anything for a minute, which India thought odd, but that was probably because she’d just narrowly avoided her asshole of a brother, whom she didn’t want to run into while on her way to ask Maisie out again.
When the bell above the door jangled, they all looked up, and India worried that Colter had returned, but it was only an old woman walking in.
“Browser,” Lainey muttered under her breath.
“That’s what we call the people we know won’t buy,” Maisie explained in a whisper. “Can I help you?” she asked the woman.
“No, thank you, dear,” the woman said. “I’ll just have a look around, if you don’t mind.”
“I don’t mind at all,” Maisie replied.
“So, I’m taking off. I’m picking Paige up for afternoon practice,” Lainey said.
“Okay. I’ll see you later,” Maisie replied.
Lainey walked to the back, leaving them alone with the old woman who was slowly making her way down the right aisle of the shop.
“So, thank you for this. I could use it,” Maisie said, holding up the coffee.
“No problem.”
“Where’s yours?”
“Oh, I can’t stay,” India said.
“No?”
“I have a small break between meetings. I thought I’d stop by because I realized that I don’t have your number, and I wasn’t sure you’d still be here when my meetings were over at five. This place is sometimes closed by then.”
While it was true that she didn’t have Maisie’s number, she hadn’t come over just to get it.
She’d planned on sticking around for a bit, talking if Maisie wasn’t busy, and then going back for her late meeting.
Hearing her half-brother threaten the woman she may or may not be dating really threw her, though, and she didn’t know where to put that right now.
On one hand, she needed to tell Maisie that she and Colter were related.
On the other, she felt like either she or Colter had to be adopted because he was the only one in their family who was like this.
India and her sister had turned out fine. Their cousins were okay, too. Yes, they were all rich, but none of them ever threatened someone like she’d just heard her brother threaten this sweet, kind woman who only wanted to protect her family’s legacy and help the people of New Orleans.
“You don’t have my number. Wow. How did we miss that?” Maisie asked.
“I don’t think we were worried about it because we knew we’d see each other.”
“Right,” Maisie replied and pulled her phone out of her pocket. “Give me yours, and I’ll text you.”
India did, and Maisie saved the number in her phone. Then, seconds later, India got a text from Maisie’s number.
“Got it,” she said without touching her phone. “So, I kind of overheard a little of the conversation from before.”
“Yeah, Colter Stone was here again,” Maisie said, almost seething.
No, she was seething. Why had India brought this up? She could have just asked Maisie out how she’d planned and left. Why had she brought up her brother when she had been so close to escaping with Maisie’s number?
“He was? What did he want?” she asked.
“To threaten me, I think.”
“He threatened you?”
“He made me an offer: drop out of the election, and he’ll guarantee landmark status for the building.”
“Oh,” she said, wondering where that had come from because when she’d brought that up with him, he had pushed her off completely.
“His team ran new polls, and they were supposed to be released today. I haven’t seen them, and I’m sure I’ll be the last to see them, but he admitted that I’m up a few points.”
“So, he’s worried about you winning now?”
“He said he wasn’t. He told me he just wanted to be done with the whole thing, and he could give up on putting some freeway or business here on my property.”
Maisie crossed her arms over her body.
“That would be bad PR for him, to tear this place down for some other thing. It wouldn’t matter what that other thing is.”
“I know. I’m trying to hold on to that, but the reality is that, yeah, if the city needs a new freeway on-ramp, they can take my property.
They’ll buy it first, but only pay the value of the land because that’s what they do sometimes, and I’ll be out the profit, my land, and most importantly, hundreds of years of my family’s work.
I’d be the one who lost this place. I can’t be the person who lets my entire family down. ”
“So, you’re going to drop out?” India asked.
“What? No. I don’t know.” Maisie sighed. “He told me he’d give me a couple of days to think about it, but I can’t just drop out, right? That guy’s a tool. I need to win this for the city, not just for Chapter & Verse.”
“I don’t know,” India said. “Maybe it makes more sense to protect this place and run again in the future. I… read up on that guy after you and I talked about him, and he seems to have ambition. He mentioned in an article I found online that he wants to be governor one day.”
“He does. But that’s no guarantee that he won’t run for city council in the next cycle. I think he wants to run for mayor next, which would give him even more power. I just wish that there was something I could do about it. He’ll win. Men like him always seem to, don’t they?”
“They do, yes,” India replied.
“Hello,” the old woman, who’s been there this whole time, said.
India turned to see her standing behind her now, so she moved out of the way.
“Can I help you find anything?” Maisie asked.
“Yes, please,” the woman replied.
“I can come back later,” India said.
“No, it’s okay. I’ll just be a second.”
“I have that meeting,” India lied.
“We close at five, but I’m working on campaign stuff. Want to maybe stop by to help? I know it’s not exactly a date, but I could use the extra fingers to dial. I’m out of money and need to make a last push.”
“Oh,” India said. “Yeah, sure. I can do that. I’ll swing by after my last meeting.”
“Great. Thank you,” Maisie replied.
“You know what would be lovely here?” the old woman said.
“What’s that?” Maisie asked.
“A place where you can get some tea or a coffee. I see your cup there, and it makes me crave a mint tea or one of those way-too-sweet coffee drinks.”
“Oh, yeah,” Maisie replied. “No café in here. Sorry. Just books. What can I help you find?”
India took that as her cue. She turned to go but turned back once more to see Maisie smiling at her.
India gave her a smile back and then noticed that there was a gap in the stacks to the left on the same wall as the bathroom.
She wondered what was there because the rest of the side walls were all covered in shelves, but that gap looked to be just wide enough for her to get an idea.
“Can I talk to you?” she asked her boss, whom she managed to catch in the Southern office lobby seconds later.
“You can talk to me as we are going up. Then, I have a meeting. What’s up?”
India walked with him to the elevator bank and said, “You wanted to expand.”
“The office? Yes. And you’ve given us a solid plan to pursue.”
“What if we did something else, too?”
“Like what?” he asked, pressing the button to go up on the wall.
“The bookstore next door that you wanted to be torn down.”
“You were against that the other day. What–”
“No, I don’t want to tear it down. I want to support it,” she said as the elevator doors opened.
“With what? A donation or something?”
“Not exactly. I was thinking about a door.”
“Sorry. What?” her boss asked and pressed the button for their floor once they got inside the elevator.
“We butt up right next to them. The gap is really small. What? A few feet, maybe?”
“Yes, I know. They had to put the dumpster and stuff for the store behind the building because it wouldn’t fit between.”
“And the café’s back door is right there now.”
“Yes.”
“What if we had a door into the bookshop and offered the customers the use of our café?”
“Which is an employee-only location,” he said.
“But it doesn’t have to be,” India replied. “We could call it something like a test kitchen, put up signs, warning people that these are employees in training or something, add a door there, cover the small gap, and they would have their own way into the lobby here. It would give Maisie a café.”
“Maisie?”
“The owner of Chapter & Verse.”
“You know the owner now?”
“Yes. But what do you think?”
“It’s a big change, one we weren’t planning for. Besides, opening the lobby to customers means having way more people down there waiting in lines, with trainees behind the counter.”
“What if I can get Juliet behind the idea? She’s the training manager now. And we don’t always have training classes there. Yes, sometimes, it’s staffed with trained employees, but we could put the signs up when there are trainees there and take them down when it’s the staff.”
“What does opening this up to customers get us?”
“Money,” she said.
“Well, obviously. But we made the decision to make it employees-only to make it an added benefit. We didn’t care about the money then. Why would we now? The lines would get longer. Employees might not like having to wait.”
The elevator dinged, indicating that they were on their floor.
“We could intensify the discounts,” she suggested.
“We know the peak times for customers, right? So, we can give the employees their normal discount for using the café during those times, and we give them every drink for free if they go when the café is dead. Food prices are the same, or we give them another ten percent off or something.”
They walked out of the elevator and turned toward their offices.
“That sounds nice, but that’s difficult. You’re talking time-based pricing. That all has to be–”
“Set up? Yeah. I know just the IT person for the job. She programmed the POS systems down there. I’m sure she can configure them to have automatic price changes based on employee or customer and make that time-based as well.”
“All of this is just because you want the bookshop to have access to our store?”
“That was where I got the idea from,” she said.
“I’d need numbers,” her boss replied.
“I know. I’ll get them.”
“Did you already get the owner to agree?”
“No, I haven’t talked to her about it yet,” India replied. “But I will today.”
He stopped walking and asked, “You haven’t even gotten this okayed by her yet?”
“Not yet. But even if she says no to the door, I’m sure she’d want the café open to customers. She could tell them to go next door for their coffee. Right now, she has nothing to offer people who are used to having coffee and pastries with their books.”
“Then, what’s the benefit to the door?”
“If they leave the shop, they’re less likely to return.
If it’s just a door that joins the buildings together, it’ll feel like it’s the same place.
They’ll walk back over. In fact, we don’t even need a door.
It can just be an opening in both buildings, and we cover the gap between so that it feels like the same place. ”
“Before you go crazy with this, run the numbers and get her permission. If that all looks good, I’ll approve the idea. Not that you really need my approval, but you’d have it.”
“Great. Thanks,” she said, feeling excited about a work idea for the first time in a while.
“And don’t forget about the more important plan: the parking garage with the gym and–”
“Yes, I know. I’m working on that, too,” she said.
India walked into her office and sat down at her desk, feeling like maybe this could be something that would help Maisie. She opened their online messaging system and started a group chat with Juliet and Finley.